


Let Her Go

by JustTooMuch



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Cheating, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, POV First Person, POV Fox Mulder, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 18:35:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustTooMuch/pseuds/JustTooMuch
Summary: I was best friends with you for six years of my life and I was going to propose in the spring. We were so in love and now what? Now what? I just need to walk away and pretend like its fine you slept with someone else? That we can work on it like you pleaded through your sobs earlier? I really don’t think I can, but for you, I try...





	Let Her Go

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed to try and get back into writing and tried to get inspired again. This came out.
> 
> Mulder's Point of View.

The silence in the apartment is deafening. I can hear the water running through the pipes in the wall, probably the neighbor next door running the water for a shower. I wish I was that neighbor right now. Anyone else but me will do. I know something is wrong. So wrong. I could feel it in the thick air as soon as I walked in. I don’t want to, but I slowly raise my head, my eyes shifting from my lap to yours. I can see the tears forming instantly in your eyes and I want to reach out to comfort you but at the same time I don’t because I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of what you’re going to tell me.

You look at me with…pity. That’s great. Just what I never thought I would see in your eyes. I thought you would be the one person to never look at me like that and yet, here we are. I hold your gaze for as long as you’ll let me, trying to read your thoughts. You look away. Down at the table between us like you know what I’m trying to see and by hiding your eyes you’ll prevent me from reading you like an open book. But you’re too easy to read and I’m trained at profiling. You know this. You work with me every day. Yet, you’re still trying to hide something from me.

I can’t take this anymore. I lean forward, just slightly, just enough to put my hand over yours that’s resting on the dining room table we picked out together. My heart stops the second I touch your skin. Not because it’s cold. You’re always cold. But because the second I touch you, you pull away from me like I burned you. God, what have you done?

Almost as if you can hear me, you look up at me and shake your head as a single tear clings to your lashes. “I’m so sorry.” You whisper. “I-I did something…” Your voice breaks right along with my heart because now, I know what you did just like I know there are two dirty wine glasses in the sink when you were supposed to be home alone all weekend. You utter a name after I ask you who it is. I don’t know him but I hate him. I want to murder him.

I don’t know how long I stay out that night. Long enough for the cold winter to make everything frozen. Numb. Good. Just what I wanted. I don’t know how but I end up at their place. The Lone Gunmen know just what to say to make me feel even worse so I don’t know why I came here. Probably because I have nowhere else to go. They tell me they know it’s hard but this is unforgivable and I need to let you go. Easy for them to say, they’ve had a total of two girlfriends between them. I was best friends with you for six years of my life and I was going to propose in the spring. We were so in love and now what? Now what? I just need to walk away and pretend like its fine you slept with someone else? That we can work on it like you pleaded through your sobs earlier? I really don’t think I can, but for you, I try.

We last a few months before I can’t take it anymore. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve asked to check your emails and asked you why you needed to go out so late with one of your friends from college when she was in town. How many times have you went to the grocery store down the street and if you didn’t come back within the time I figured it should take you to pick up yogurt and bread I start to think you’re with him. Then we fight when you walk into the door because I don’t fucking trust you. I can’t. And it sucks. I thought I would trust you with my life forever but you ruined that…but I still want to make this work. How can I just throw away everything we’ve been through just because you made one mistake that you promised me would never happen again? I can’t. So, I apologize for my behavior over the last three months and we go to counseling and work on our deep feelings but it just makes it worse because all of my deep feelings are angry and resentful and I hate you. Two months into counseling, our therapist suggests we try to be intimate again. We haven’t been in five months and the thought makes me sick. He was the last person to see you naked, touch you…be inside of you.

I know you touch yourself when you think I’m asleep. Do you think about him or me? I get my answer when we try for the first time. When we move into the bedroom and everything between us is off. We used to be so good at this. Fire. And now you’re dry and I’m soft and when I touch you, you flinch and pull away and you’ve moved on. I find out that I have moved on as well when you let slip that you saw him yesterday and kissed him and I feel nothing.

I wanted to stay for you, I really did. I thought we could work it out but you want him and I just…want my basement office to myself again.

You at least have the decency to give me that.

You move out. I move out. Our apartment is sold to another happy couple. You leave the D.C. field office and move far away from me. I stay. Move into another, smaller apartment that I actually like better. Buy myself some fish and name all one, two, three, four of them Molly.

In the spring I sell your engagement ring and put a down payment on a red Ford Mustang that I know I will never drive but you hated cars like that and this is my final fuck you before I stop thinking about you all together.

Two more springs come and go and my life is solitary but enjoyable. I have my job, the Lone Gunmen, Molly One, Two, and Three, Four unfortunately passing away, and my Mustang that, as it turns out, I actually do drive occasionally. I heard someone mention your name in the break room at work. I glanced up from my coffee cup for all of two seconds, just the shock of hearing someone’s name after not thinking of them for years, you know, but that was it. That was my acknowledgment that I knew you but I don’t anymore. Good luck with your new assignment, Diana.

I got a new partner that same day.

She’s short, redheaded, strict in her science, unwavering in her beliefs, and makes my heart beat faster than it should. As it turns out, she is my one in five billion, my touchstone, my constant, the love of my life, my wife, and the mother of our three children, Emily, William, and Lily.

Emily just went off to college and it’s bittersweet. We wanted her to stay a baby forever but we’re glad she grew into a responsible young woman that never wants to work in the FBI. She’s a scientist, like her mother. Will is wild and just started to study for his driver’s test that he will be taking next year. He’s studying so far in advance because he doesn’t want to drive like his mother. I agree and she pouts but I can see her lips twitch up into a smirk every time. I love teasing her about her driving and her tiny little feet not reaching the pedals…just like she loves teasing me about how Lily just started her period and wants to wear makeup and perfume. The only difference is, I don’t smirk under my pout. Another baby growing up and it’s not funny at all, Dana Katherine Mulder. I love my wife, though. God, more than anything. Because she is the woman who made my life the best it could possibly be. The woman who never wavered in her love or loyalty to me.

I’m telling you this because, after all these years you came back to the D.C. field office for a consultation and saw me and assumed because I work in the same basement office and wear the same ties and had my wedding ring off for cleaning that I’m still single and ready to jump back into your arms when you ask me out for coffee. No, Diana.

“The only person I want to get coffee with is my wife. Thanks, though... Speak of the devil.” I say with a smirk as I see my redhead stepping off the elevator, two coffees in hand, and my freshly cleaned wedding band loose on her thumb.


End file.
